Arts Reviews

There are still some things that the BBC does incredibly well, and The Diary of Anne Frank (BBC1, Monday to Friday) was one. It’s the licence fee that allows the corporation to take these risks, and next time the Murdoch press whinges about it, you might contemplate the limitless dross we would have to suffer if it went. (By the way, taking the Times and the Sunday Times for a year costs nearly three times as much as the licence fee. I wonder which most people would think better value?) If Anne Frank had lived, she would have been 80 this year. Over the decades the story has become sanitised

William Cook talks to the creators of some of TV’s funniest and best-loved comedy programmes As our economy disappears down the plughole, along with the reputations of most of our bankers and politicians, the one consolation is that entertainers like Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross suddenly seem terribly passé. When you’re broke, there’s nothing entertaining about other people’s affluence — or decadence — and, even if you can make ends meet, failure is always far funnier than success. The two men who understand this better than anyone are sitting side by side on the same sofa, in the august but comfy drawing room of a grand old house near Hampton

Andrew Lambirth looks forward to some great exhibitions in the year ahead There’s a very full year’s viewing ahead to cheer the eye and gladden the heart however bleak the financial prospects. For a start, the National Gallery is mounting a major exhibition focusing on the fascinating relationship that Picasso had with the art of the past. His reworkings of Goya, Velázquez, Rembrandt, Chardin and Delacroix, together with responses to more contemporary masters such as van Gogh and Gauguin, provide a riveting dialogue of minds. Picasso: Challenging the Past (25 February to 7 June) will offer new ways to look at the Old Masters as well as a different take

Ronald Blythe examines William Blake’s influence on the work of the 19th-century artist Samuel Palmer Samuel Palmer was in his early twenties when he wrote in his notebook, ‘The Glories of Heaven might be tried — hymns sung among the hills of Paradise at eventide…’ As a subject for a painting he means. Just before this he discovered his paradisal hills at Shoreham on the Kentish coast. And that very same year, 1824, he had also discovered how to paint them, for John Linnell, his future father-in-law, had taken him to visit William Blake. This meeting was profound. Blake was near death and living with his wife in a grubby

Time for another occasional series. And since it’s Christmas, how better to honour the true spirit of the season than by recalling some classic TV advertisements from the past? Come to think of it, that’s what Gordon Brown and his cronies would want you to do: nothing like a spot of stimulus spending is there? This being so, I think this classic – two minutes long! We had an attention span back then! – McEwan’s Lager ad from 1988 rather sums up the way plenty of people are feeling at the moment, don’t you?

Damian Thompson says we can learn a lot about Beethoven if we look beyond the symphonies Beethoven Unwrapped is the title of the year-long musical celebration marking the opening of Kings Place, the new ‘creative centre’ at King’s Cross. But does Beethoven, of all composers, need unwrapping? The answer is yes, more than ever, if the process allows us to examine his music without constantly genuflecting in front of the symphonies. The Kings Place festival includes only one live Beethoven symphony: the First, played by the Avison Ensemble next March. That’s fine by me. A full cycle would have distracted attention from performances of the complete piano sonatas, violin sonatas,